How can an accurate height map be created in Blender?
I've just looked into your way of making a height map, which seems a bit snappier than a Mist pass for something like this - I'd never thought of doing it this way...

So long as you keep the color-space linear all the way through, it works fine, as far as I can see.



In the Render > Color Management panel, set the View Transform to 'Raw'... Using EEVEE, here, but Cycles would work, too.. image saved as 16-bit RGB PNG. When used as a texture in a Displacement modifier, the Color Space in the texture must be set to 'Linear', too.



I didn't make a fuss about smoothing and subdivision, but the results seem accurate. Original on the left, displacement with EEVEE image &amp; displacement with Cycles image on the right, with the Displacement modifier set to a Strength of the Z dimension of the original object.